10 Secret Reasons Why The Avengers Is the Best Superhero Film

6. As The Four Super-Humans Represent the Elemental Forces of Creation, the Three Human Avengers Invoking Them Symbolize Incarnations of the Wizard-Warriors Who Have Summoned Them Throughout History and Myth.

The fictional genealogy goes like this: in 1965 Marvel rebooted Nick Fury from a tough World War II commander into a James Bond-inspired super spy leading the elite anti-terrorism force SHIELD.

Once we reach Bond, the direct connection to Hermeticism appears:

This is the glyph that John Dee, the Renaissance scientist, Hermeticist, and spy, used in his communiques with Queen Elizabeth. It's the origin of James Bond's "007" name and his "For Your Eyes Only" motto. The Slash above the two 00s (two eyes) is meant to mean a covering of the eyes.

The eyes have further significance when we consider the most distinguishing characteristic of Fury, his eye patch:

In the fight with Seth, Horus lost his left eye (and Seth his testicles - symbols of the causes of revolt, violence, sexual perversity and turbulence). This left Eye of Horus is the endangered & injured Eye, also called "the black eye" (his "empty Eye" torn out), associated with the cycle of the Moon (its destruction is associated with the New Moon, its restoration with the Full Moon). It was miraculously filled and completed by Thoth and then given back to Horus (as it is brought to Pharaoh) as a "full Eye" or "Eye of Thoth"

Horus and Set fought with the world between them. Horus, the Hawk-Headed god of light battled the monster god of death and chaos. In the fight Horus lost his eye and Thoth created his replacement, symbolized in our culture today by the eye in the triangle on the back of the dollar bill.

This balance between two struggling natural forces finds further expression in another well-known Hermetic symbol, now adapted in our culture to signify medicine:

Male deities were not the only ones of the Egyptian Pantheon capable of healing and restoring balance. Thoth's female equivalent, in some cases depicted as his wife, was the Ostrich-feather wearing Ma'at, usually depicted as a young woman...